Emma Mattinson-Hardy

I’m assuming that some people are happy that Article 50 has been signed, although I’m doing my best to avoid them. Perhaps they are the same people who are focused on looking backwards for the solutions to problems in the present. Whether we like it or not, we are in a period of immense change.…

Guest reviewer Emma Mattinson-Hardy takes us through this week’s best education blogs. We need to talk about the army of elephants @rethinking_ed James Mannion asks whether all the reforms we discuss are merely “rearranging the chairs on the Titanic”. First impressions of Twitter appear to show strong entrenched differences in opinion, but there is a…

Guest reviewer Emma Mattinson-Hardy takes us through this week’s best education blogs. The pressures schools face are set to grow, so the question remains: what are we prepared to do about it? The blogs I have selected this week all contribute to answering that question. “Happy the eyes that can close” – on the reality…

Guest reviewer Emma Mattinson-Hardy, talks you through the best education blogs the web had on offer this week. Grim up north? @ReclaimSchools In case you missed it, the chief inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw last week chose to hit to headlines with a damning description of life in northern schools. This blog presents a balanced…

Party conference season is upon us and each political party is setting out its stall in how they think education should be run. Whether we agree with it or not, education is a political issue. With over 300 Labour stalls and 100 NUT stalls popping up to protest against May’s proposal to have more grammar…

How was it for you? Even after 11 years as a teacher I never slept before my first day back. My feelings were a mixture of impatience to meet my new class and begin all of the things I had planned, and nervousness about the latest initiative/hoop/change. As we face the year with increasing funding…

Sitting here the day after the Northern Rocks conference, I realise that it is possible to be both exhausted and exhilarated. The weekend has left me in a more optimistic mood about the power the profession has to unite and force progress. In this age of austerity, the challenges our students are facing have never…

After a weekend of alleged u-turns that prove that you should always read the small print, and a week of teachers reporting on the continuing farce that are this year’s SATs, it feels good to remember what and who matters in education. Have we reached the tipping point of what we will sacrifice for good…

Pedagogy is political @PhilBeadle Following the publication of the education white paper, surely there can be no one who doesn’t believe that the reforms are political. In this blog, Beadle argues convincingly that it is also pedagogy that is political. One of the parts that resonated so strongly with me was this description: “The intention…

Sucking the life out of learning By @jennielou75 What a week to be a primary teacher! After the writing exemplifications documents sent shockwaves through primary schools, the response I heard from a group of teachers in Darlington was echoed across the country. The sense was one of panic as teachers knew that more children would…

Education. What’s it all for? By @EddiePlayfair Some have called this a pointless debate. I have referred to it in the past as a discussion that can only be had with a couple of bottles of red wine to take away the pain of the endless circling debate. Twitter is filled with people claiming that any…